David Kolb: If at first you don't succeed, try another 36 times

The physician’s assistant at the doctor’s office opens the waiting room door and calls to the man who is holding his sore head. He follows her into the examination room where she asks him to sit in the chair.

“Oh,” she says, looking at the obvious pain the man is in, “that must hurt.”

“Yes,” he says testily, “very much.”

In this May 16, 2013, photo, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington about repealing the Affordable Care Act. "Now we've learned that the IRS, which is tasked with enforcing this very unpopular bill of Obamacare, the IRS admitted they targeted Americans," Bachmann said.AP FILE PHOTO

After some minutes, the doctor comes in. “What seems to be the problem?” he asks his patient in a cheerful voice.

The man is in a very bad mood due to the throbbing, and hates to hear a cheerful voice. “My head hurts every time I do this,” he almost shouts.

Without waiting for an answer, he stands up and then proceeds to show the doctor exactly what he does with his head, and promptly injures it again.

While the man’s pain recedes, the two just look at each other.

“The cure is very simple,” answers the doctor, finally.

“Yes, yes,” says the man anxiously. “What? What? What is the cure?”

“Don’t do that.”

A classic definition of insanity, probably wrongly attributed to Albert Einstein, is “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

So, what are we to make of the actions of the political party with the severely aching head, which within the last several weeks interrupted its important work of hurting minorities and the poor, and obstructing the ongoing economic recovery, by voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act of 2009, otherwise known as Obamacare, for the 37th time in four years?

One could grant such buffoonery, committed at great taxpayer expense considering the costs of operating the U.S. House of Representatives, the luxury of excusing a single vote every four years in order to express a sense of displeasure.

But that would leave 33 additional votes for which there is no plausible excuse or even creditable explanation, for devoting time, debate and action in pushing forth patently phony legislation that has zero chance of succeeding.

Why is it a waste of time? Let’s see now.

First, Obamacare is the law of the land, upheld by the United States Supreme Court, a conservative body.

Second and most importantly, the make-believe attempts to “repeal” Obamacare by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has absolutely no chance of passing the Democratically-controlled U.S. Senate, which will block such legislation from ever even reaching the president’s desk.

Finally, should the impossible somehow occur, and by accident, one of the cynical Obamacare repeal bills carries the Senate, then President Obama would veto such a heartless measure, since the law has already helped millions of patients who never had health care before Obamacare.

You know, I love my loony, right-wing Republican friends. Without their frenzy, their loopy antics and their craziness, I’d have almost nothing to write about.

So I’ve got some advice for them:

“Don’t do that.”

David Kolb is former editorial page editor of The Muskegon Chronicle. Email: writersgroupllc@gmail.com